My Pregnancy in a Nutshell

We found out last July that I was pregnant. I waited as long as possible to take the pregnancy test, and then I just couldn't wait any longer. One morning I woke up, completely unable to go back to sleep. So, at 4:00 am I took a test, and I thought I saw a line. I showed it to a very sleepy Mr G, and he said he didn't see anything. It didn't deter me, because I KNEW it was a line. I was right!

Fast forward to around 6 weeks later, and I started feeling ill all day, with it getting worse as the day wore on. The only things I could stomach were fruit, sugary things, and fried things. Even smells of other things just made me want to throw up. Meat was totally out, and vegetables were from Satan. It was not a pleasant experience. This lasted for around 6 weeks, and we traveled to California from Manchester while I had "morning" sickness. We wanted to wait to announce the pregnancy until 12 weeks, so it was hard trying to keep the pregnancy quiet when I basically couldn't eat anything. We did manage to keep it quiet though.

The healthcare I received in the UK during this time was excellent! We had some scares very early on, and I was able to get in immediately for ultrasounds to check on the baby. The only thing I didn't really care for was the inability to get to know the midwives who would be present during the birth. It was a disappointment, but then, I wasn't paying for the services either!

Fast forward to later in the year, and I was approached by my former employer about a possibility back in the US that I should apply for. It sounded great, so after a lot of consideration, I decided to apply for it. Well, I got it. So, we moved from the UK back to the US during my last couple of months of pregnancy. As crazy as it sounds, everything went great! My job is awesome, some of our friends are still here, and I was able to find an EXCELLENT midwifery practice in town. Everything was going so smoothly...and then I found out Miss E was breech...and she wouldn't turn for anything! We did an external cephalic version, I laid upside down on an ironing board, and I had chiropractic treatments. She just didn't want to turn.

So, I was scheduled in for a C-Section. As I'll write about in another post, I was very unhappy about having to schedule a C-Section, because I wanted to go all natural, but it turned out great and we got an awesome baby girl out of it! I'll talk about that later too. But in the meantime, here is a series of pictures we took during the pregnancy.

Here We Go Again

Well, we've moved back from Manchester to Colorado (yeah, I need to change the blog title), Miss E has arrived (I'll talk more about that in another post or five), and my life is chaotic yet again. Maybe it's the lack of sleep from getting up every 2-3 hours to feed Miss E or maybe it's the lack of computing time I've been getting lately, but I had a desire to blog again. So, here I am!

Since I haven't been writing for pretty much the entire year, I probably won't have a lot of writing related posts, at least not pertaining to me. But, I may talk about other writer friends who have books coming out or who are posting awesome things. I also hope to have some reviews of books I've managed to read in between working, breastfeeding, cooking, cleaning, etc. But for the time being, I would like to post some things about my pregnancy and birth experiences along with the experiences of being a new mom and product reviews. I was told all sorts of things about having a baby when I was pregnant, and some things worked out while others didn't. I felt like some pieces of advice or other people's experiences weren't realistic and sugarcoated the whole thing, so I plan to not do that here. I'll just tell it like it is, because I think that's more useful. Maybe writing about my experiences will be a little cathartic for me as well.